


A LETTER TO KATHRYN

by vanhunks



Series: PALIMPSEST [1]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7634278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanhunks/pseuds/vanhunks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after their return home, Chakotay, married to Seven of Nine, writes Kathryn a letter. It is their first communication in three years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A LETTER TO KATHRYN

**Author's Note:**

> This short piece started out as a standalone story, under the original name "Palimpsest: a letter to Kathryn". When I started writing sequels, I name the series "Palimpsest" and each story with its own title.

* * *

Dear Kathryn

This letter must come as a surprise to you. I wasn’t certain how I should address you. ‘Dear’ suggested such a sense of familiarity, of closeness that I had second thoughts, and to offer a ‘hello’ or ‘hi’ as my salutation again appeared too detached, like an attempt to initiate a new acquaintance. When I considered what friends we had been, the ‘dear’ won out. For while we are no longer close, maybe not even friends, you still remain very dear to me.

I’m stalling, I know. You’re wondering why I’m writing now, after so long, and I had agonised long - in between cups of Vulcan Mocha and glasses of Marula Brandy - on how I could express the reason for writing you this letter. It has taken courage, I can tell you that, to take up my pen and fill these lines.

It is not easy. Not easy at all.

Our lives, as you’ve always said, are made up of choices, and whatever choice we make, we must live by it, and accept responsibility for it. Nothing can wholly prepare us for the consequences, or equip us so sufficiently for the heartache, the grief, the guilt and irretrievable loss that accompany those choices we make, for all time in a reckless attempt to secure our happiness.

I thought I was ready, and I imagined that I could be armoured against pain and sadness and a deep, echoing emptiness that must have insinuated itself right from the moment we parted. No, let me clarify that. The emptiness had always been there, Kathryn, and please, please, please, do not feel bad that I’m saying this, in this way. Always, during our lost years - how true that sounds now - I’ve had this ache deep inside of me that wanted solace, a return of the feelings I had for you, to be assuaged by complete reciprocation. It was never to be, but I lived with it, slept with it, fought with it, yes, even accepted it.

A man must surely suffer grave aberrations to entertain such possibilities even for a few seconds. But the moment, Kathryn, the moment I allowed myself to think that I could buy happiness and comfort and peace of mind in the arms of another, I knew with a dreaded conviction that peace would be fleeting, and happiness just a sieve through which golden water seeped away into the ground. I began to entertain this notion that I could purge myself of the dark, sad echoes in my heart, replace and resettle in that corner where you had been steadfastly established as permanent and supreme in all my affections with another being. I thought that would calm the anger, the hurt and the profound sense of loss I experienced when you told me there was no hope for me.

My considerations had been primarily for my own happiness; that my life had something complete about it, that I could say at the end of our journey: “This I had achieved”, or “Here is the brilliant being who is the other half of me” or “Here is the reason I am alive”. It was not fair to her, and ultimately, not to us. I felt I needed to say those things and I felt I needed to show something, a reward - not that I thought Kathryn Janeway is a reward of any kind, but I’m sure you know what I mean - for seven years of hardship, for privation of the soul’s needs.

They were seven lean years, Kathryn. Seven years in which I hungered and endured great thirst. I longed for cool streams where I could drink, and all the time, the fates ignored me, ignored my desperation pleas to release me from my prison of sadness. At the end of it, I demanded from myself that at least with Annika beside me, I had something to show the world.

How could anything work if it does not have as its basis supreme trust, a deep and abiding friendship such as we’ve had to recommend it? I am now, more than ever, filled with a feeling of intense regret that I sought such an association for the wrong reasons, an even greater regret that I sought it at all. For much as I had waited in darkness and patiently allowed the spirits to guide me to your light, I think I should have waited more.

Now, instead of walking the road I had always walked, for it was a familiar road filled with sorrow, I let another suffer as well. She did not deserve it, Kathryn. She did not deserve it because in the final analysis, I used her.

I was not much of a human being, was I?

I remember one evening clearly, when she said to me, “You drink, Chakotay. But, you remain thirsty still.”

I understood the underlying truth of her words, but what could I tell her then? How could I look her in those expressive and direct eyes and lie? But the lies joined the guilt and sadness and deceit and conspired to undermine all the strength I had imagined I used to purge you from my heart. It was my punishment, I believe, a way to have a constant reminder that all was not well in a warrior’s heart. So I told her some odd story of wanting to sail the seven seas again.

Tonight I miss you. I am restless again, unable to walk or sit or stand or even sleep without seeing your face and the way your eyes always light up and your hair shines. Strange, isn’t it? I have not seen you or spoken with you in a while. We agreed on that. We’ve been home three years and I thought that by now I should have acquired the resolve to keep myself from missing you. You might ask: how was it possible when I _had_ Annika by my side?

I tried, dearest Kathryn. I tried so hard. But those attempts eroded my armour piece by agonising piece, so that even the toughest metal showed cracks and allowed the pain to suffuse and play around in riotous abandon with little regard for my aching heart.

If you see a blotch here at this line, don’t mind it.  I can tell you it was the brandy I  spilled. My lie is couched in a truth you will understand.

As I said, this is not easy for me.

You told me when we returned that we could put seven years of friendship behind us and we could each go our own way. I tried to tell you - forgive me that I remind myself of this again - that it was impossible. We have shared so much, been through too much to wipe away everything we’ve been to each and sever the ties that bound us. I tried to tell you that even though I made a new life for me, it didn’t mean that I should lose you.

You let me get too close, Kathryn.

Without realising it, without ever uttering a word, you let me get close to you, and you allowed me to love you so much that I thought there could never be another person in this universe who could understand me the way you did. The way I believe you still do. There has never been a person alive - if I discount my departed father - who could look into the depths of my soul and know that I was just a lonely person, a person with a quest and with desires unspoken or misunderstood by so many. I was dead until I met you, Kathryn. I was half a person, a man who could only come alive, who could only be whole with you by my side. What were the fates that threw me into your path, what were the stars that guided me to you? What were they that my life had been so fulfilled for having known you, only for them to betray me, to let me flounder alone without you? I took every look, every touch on my hand, my shoulder, my cheek and indexed them as true, verified by your smile, underscored by your kind voice, and eternalised in the endearing curve of your mouth.

You let me get too close and then asked me to do the impossible: forget you.

Tonight I miss you. I am alone and I am lonely. It is dreary outside, the rain had been falling steadily since early morning. The sombreness of the day touched me and I wondered, not for the first time, how I would get through it. But here I am, still alive. Half alive! I am sitting here penning these thoughts to you. You know how I love to write with pen and paper. Yes, I know how you teased me about it. Your eyes were smiling with such kindness, such benevolence then that I knew I could never think you were heartless in your teasing.

I write this letter because I miss you and need tell you that. I need to tell you that my life in incomplete without you in it and I need to tell you that this is something I have to do, and Kathryn, whatever the situation now between us, whatever the conditions placed on our association now, whatever feelings have died between us, I need that you understand it’s something I must do. I don’t think I can endure another day looking at a flower and not see the yellow rose I gave you once. I don’t think I can look at another painting and not see the sand eagle I painted for you on New Earth. I don’t think I can look at your photo that I have here on my desk - yes, I still have it, did you know that? - and not see your smiling eyes, the burnished glints in you hair, or remember your voice.

My pen bleeds across each line, dearest Kathryn. It struggles to convey to you such thoughts as that I don’t miss you, or that I am over you, or that you will never mean more to me what I’ve always, always dreamed you could.

I guess I asked too much, didn’t I?

Why did you allow it and let me imagine things everlasting? Why did you let me get so close to you? Why did you promise me the moon? Did I read you wrong? Did I see in a touch a message of love? Did your hand on my shoulder promise only caring of a Captain towards her First Officer? Did our heads close together in conversation innumerable times on the bridge only mean we were colleagues? How did I miss such things as eyes that lit up, or teasing lilts in your voice when you reserved such teasing only for me?

But you were right. We had to observe protocol, and so you withdrew.

I thought I could do it. You once told me you’ll always be in my life, as my friend, my confidant, my inspiration. How you lifted me then, how I felt I could fly anywhere! As long as you were always there, it was the reason I existed. In the beginning it was good. We shared, we laughed, we joked, we had arguments. We were great together.

But they were crumbs you gave me, and by the spirits, by all that I thought holy or drove my existence, I was willing to eat them. Every morsel you threw from your table I would greedily take and it would be heaven because I was too hungry and thirsty.

Annika was right. I am thirsty still.

You might ask why am I telling you these things when I’ve made my life with someone else. You might ask why am I telling you I am lonely without you. You might ask why your former First Officer is suddenly, after three years, breaking the silence you fostered upon us.

It is raining outside, the sky filled with dreary grey clouds that mirror the bleakness within me. I am alone. I guess you know that, Kathryn. She left me, Kathryn. I guess you know that too, don’t you? Perhaps you don’t know how lonely I am. Not because she left me, but because I could not let you go. She sensed that, did you know? I thought that by doing what I did, I could cut you out of my life and heart forever. It was a last, desperate attempt to sever myself from my impossible attachment to you, and knowing that you could never return in full measure what I felt for you.

Kathryn, the paper I’m writing on is parchment made from papyrus, such as the ancient Egyptians used. Well, I did reinforce the paper, so it will withstand some handling. Did you notice the faint lines of script underneath my own writing?

You did?

It is called a palimpsest. When you erase text from a manuscript and then write over it, sometimes an impression of what had been there before can be seen.

How did you know what I’m going to say next?

Indulge me then. Rarely is any person given an opportunity to rewrite his life. Yes, some have had such miserable existences that they may never want to relive them. Most times a man can say: “If things are going well for me now, why would I want to be twenty one again?” I’ve had a life, Kathryn. There were many things that were good, and just as many things that were bad. I was enriched by it, my character forged through overcoming the adversities I’ve endured before we were in the Delta Quadrant and during our years there. I want to change nothing, because they’re part of who I am and an indispensable part of who I’ve become. .

But do you know, there is something I’d like to do over, and I know that if I should be so privileged to do it, all the former things will still be there, Kathryn. They cannot be erased so completely and if you’d care to look, you can see my life for what it was, and what it can be again.

I am a palimpsest. I am all of me, all that was and all that can be added. My life is written, not yet complete, and the only way to complete it, Kathryn, is if you can come and help me write the final chapters of it.

Do you know that is has suddenly stopped raining?

I await your answer, Kathryn.

With all my love,

Chakotay.

 *****

 


End file.
